President Donald Trump has once against stirred up the Left and the Right. In a joint press conference on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump announced that his solution for addressing the Palestinian unrest was for the U.S. to take over Gaza. Here were his comments:

The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous, unexplored bombs and other weapons on the site. Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area. Do a real job. Do something different. Just can’t go back. If you go back, it’s going to end up the same way it has for 100 years.

This proposal piggybacks on his earlier idea of resettling Gazan civilians in neighboring countries that are Muslim, like Jordan and Egypt.

This idea is straight out of the real estate mogul’s playbook. Gaza is ideal beachfront property, you might say, and there are a myriad of opportunities there. It’s something the Palestinians should have taken advantage of with all the foreign aid they have received. Sadly, most of that aid was stolen by the terrorist group Hamas, whom the Palestinian people elected to lead them.

Side note: USAID, a Democrat slush fund currently being targeted by DOGE, was apparently a significant funder of the aid funneled to Hamas. According to the U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs, “Since 2021, USAID/West Bank and Gaza has invested over $600 million in economic support funding of the Palestinian people, in addition to the over $2.1 billion in humanitarian assistance since October 7, 2023.”

When asked by the press who would live in the rebuilt Gaza, Trump said his vision was for an international community where anyone could live. In response to Trump’s announcement, Netanyahu commended the president:

Your willingness to puncture conventional thinking, thinking that has failed time and time and time again, your willingness to think outside the box with fresh ideas, will help us achieve all these goals. And I’ve seen you do this many times. You cut to the chase. You see things others refuse to see. You say things others refuse to say, you know. And after the jaws drop, people scratch their heads, and they say, ‘You know, he’s right.’“

Later, he said, "This is the first good idea that I’ve heard.”

While this out-of-the-box thinking is completely on brand when it comes to Trump and the Middle East, there are significant roadblocks to his plan. National Review’s Philip Klein lays it out eloquently: “The most fundamental flaw of the proposal is the assumption that the Palestinian population primarily is interested in living in a peaceful and prosperous place somewhere else. In reality, Palestinians are largely supportive of Hamas terrorism, they see Gaza as their homeland, and they don’t think Israel should exist. They will not want to leave. And other Arab countries won’t want to take them precisely because they know that it would mean importing a terrorism problem.”

I have also pointed out that Egypt and Jordan are totally uninterested in having more Palestinians in their land because the population is so radical. When the Palestinians are allowed to resettle in other countries, they have a destabilizing effect.

No one wants them.

This idea of the U.S. claiming more territory and revamping Gaza into a beautiful beachfront community is so off the wall that one can only assume Trump’s hyperbole is intended to do three things: 1. Show just how much Trump is willing to back Israel. 2. Illustrate that the Hamas regime is an oppressive and destructive one. 3. Use the threat as leverage to get Hamas to make meaningful concessions and reforms.

“It’s astounding how stupefying virtually the entire media field is on Trump’s out-of-the-box chess moves related to Gaza,” our Mark Alexander observes. “Every media source is treating this like checkers for their low-info consumers — low-info because the information they get is stupid. Trump has cleverly shifted attention from the two-state solution and is highlighting the fact that Egypt and Jordan want nothing to do with the Palestinians. This is not about turning Gaza into a resort; it’s about changing the debate.”

The bottom line: It’s effectively trolling in the sense that a beachfront resort isn’t going to spring up on the eastern Mediterranean. Still, the left-wing and right-wing media are having fits about it.

Whether or not Trump is serious about Gaza Plaza Beach-o-Rama, he is unquestionably serious about bringing peace to the Middle East. Frankly, the status quo has led to more war, more attacks, and more unrest for decades. It’s time to make it stop.